Simple kindness

Market days are about selling vegetables, welcoming neighbours, chatting about what we’ll eat this week and seeing the joy of kids heading out to the goats. But today was overwhelmingly about kindness. I was so touched by kindness towards me and others.  As I experienced it, I became more aware of it around me. Kindness was the gift of this week.

It was the gift of baked goodies, the enthusiasm of a young boy for beautiful & fresh veggies, the warm comments from so many people and the hand-dyed cloth blowing gently in the breeze (just to name a few).  Thank you.

I was reminded of a poem Denise has shared with me previously.  Try reading it aloud:)

Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

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